Ethnomethodology;

I’m looking forward to summer, when it rains for days in a row on the first sunny day I will be commanded to mow the lawn. Understanding the consequences of being kicked out of home if I don’t I will snidely reply ‘there is nothing I can think of that I would rather be doing’. I will take the clip over the ears with glee, almost as an entitlement. God bless sarcasm.

Almost as fulfilling as making sarcastic comments is watching them go straight over people’s heads. Most people are able to identify sarcasm at least most of the time. It is often used to create humour and in instances where people don’t understand (for instance the character of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory) there is even greater comedy created. Sarcasm usually entails verbally communicating the exact opposite of what is meant by the use – so how then do we correctly interpret the meaning? Rather than attributing a verbal tool such as sarcasm as to a rule or social norm in interaction, Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology takes a somewhat more humanistic approach. Ethnomethodology suggests that individuals possess a ‘common sense’ knowledge of everyday social interactions. This allows us to interpret the socially constructed meaning of an event or in this case what is being said. In the instance of sarcasm, ethnomethodological frameworks allow us to detect sarcasm in people we’ve never even met by ascribing meaning to their words through our own understanding of social interactions. With this in mind Garfinkel may see Sheldon as pretty smart, however he’s well below average in social smarts.

xoxo Gossip Mitch

EDIT: I really wanted to find a video for my blog and use it and this was just too good not to use. This video is an example of where we apply our own ethnomethodological frameworks to conceptualise humour in what could without these frameworks appear a bland interview -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMsLArefSOw